Numerous food products such as hot dogs, apples and the like are mounted on elongate stick handles to facilitate handling and eating thereof by consumers. The sticks are made of paper and include a pointed end which may be inserted into the food product to mount the latter thereon. Various types of apparatus have been devised in the past to partially automate the process of inserting the sticks into the food products. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,062,108 discloses a stick insertion apparatus provided with a hopper for storing a plurality of sticks in a horizontal position and sequentially delivering the same through a supply duct to a feed station aligned with a horizontal insertion axis; the food product is held between a pair of reciprocable jaws while a reciprocating drive rod forces a stick at the feed station into the stationarily held food product. Although this apparatus is satisfactory in some applications, it requires that the product be held with some force imposed by the jaws which may in some cases damage the food product, and in any event requires considerable structure and mechanism. Furthermore, this apparatus requires that the food product be rotated ninety degrees to a horizontal position which is undesirable in the case of food products which must remain in an upright position prior to, and during comsumption thereof.
Another device for inserting sticks into food products is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,025,032. This latter mentioned device comprises a spring loaded, vertically reciprocable plunger provided with a cradle for holding the food product in an upright position and a bore extending longitudinally through the plunger aligned with an insertion axis. Sticks are manually placed into the bore after which the food product is placed on the cradle and the plunger is shifted downwardly, thereby inserting the stick into the food product; while the insertion operation of this type of device is quite satisfactory, some inefficiency is associated with the need for manually feeding the individual sticks into the plunger bore.